Home Field Advantage

 

Home Field Advantage

or

The Coach Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks.

© 2024 Ross Williams

My youngest son plays little league baseball which, in this part of the country is – for some strange reason – called Khoury League.  Not to brag too much, but he's the second best player on the team.

His team went into tonight's game in first place and undefeated.  11-0-2.  Tonight they played a pretty good team, among the better teams around.  The Troy White Sox.  A team my son's team, Maryville, had beaten the White Sox a week and a half ago on a series of technicalities.  But tonight they lost miserably, and looked horrible doing it. It was embarrassing.

Maryville won the first game against the Troy White Sox, at the Maryville field, by an NFL-ish score of 13-11.  On, as I say, a technicality.  Two, actually.  Maryville's prior game had been against Highland.  That game ended in a tie, and it included an incident where a Highland player – an 11 year old kid – corked the ball about 175 feet to straightaway center field.  Maryville's head coach asked the umpire to look at the bat that had been used.  It was a softball bat.

Technical details are important for pedantic people, and umpires are supposed to be pedantic.  The rules of the Little League that calls itself Khoury specify that bats must have a barrel width no greater than 2-5/8 inches.  Softball bats start with a barrel width of 2-3/4 inches, and get fatter from there.  They are also heavier because they are built for hitting a heavier and softer ball.  When a softball bat hits a lighter and harder baseball, the ball goes farther and much faster.  It can be dangerous to kids who don't have quick reflexes.  In the game with Highland, it went about 75 feet farther than even the heftiest 11 year old can hit a ball, even with a perfect swing on a perfect pitch – neither of which exist among 11 year olds who swing bats or pitch baseballs.

Not even occasionally.

But the rules did not specify “No Softball Bats”; it only specified a maximum barrel width.  A message was sent to the league to inquire about this and ask for clarification, and apparently someone in the league office did some research and discovered that softball bats start with a barrel width of 2-3/4 inches.  Before Maryville's next game a message was sent out to all teams declaring that umpires would be checking bats to make sure they were Official Little League Bats with a barrel width no greater than 2-5/8 inches.

Maryville's next game after the Highland Softball Bat fiasco was against the Troy White Sox.  Maryville was the home team.  Umpires consulted with coaches prior to the game to cover ground rules and explain the emphasis on bat barrel width.  The Troy White Sox scored a bunch in the top of the first; Maryville scored almost as much in the bottom half.  After the second inning, Maryville was up by a few.  It could arguably have been tied, but a Troy player was called out for using an illegal bat, ending the inning.

The Troy coaches were livid and screamed at the umpire about it.  Hey, it was explained prior to the game.  You didn't check your bats?  That's on you.

For what it's worth, every single kid on the Maryville team exhaled a collective “Huh? Do I have an illegal bat??”

They all, to an 11 year old, pulled out their bats and furiously began pestering the Maryville coaches who were too busy coaching to listen to them.  So they began pestering me, the team's score-keeper.

Kids!  It says right on the barrel.  Read it.  You can read, can't you?  Or are you in public school?  Look: “Official Little League – 2-5/8 inch.”  Calm down.

After three innings, it was less close with Maryville on top, but “Last Inning” had been called – evening game, no lights on the field, games are held to 90 minutes or thereabouts.  Four innings and sometimes only three are about all they play.  Troy came up in the top of the fourth.  And scored run after run after run.  It was 13-11 Maryville with two outs and runners on, and a Troy kid pasted a ball that would score one [or more, depending on how well Maryville's 11 year olds can hit the cut-off man, which they can't...].  And the batter was called out for an illegal bat.  The run comes off the board, the game ends, and Troy's coaches are collectively having several apoplectic fits each and screaming at the umpire.

You were called once for it, and you didn't check your bats?  You didn't check your bats after you were told before the game that this would be an issue?

That's on you – twice.

Last game of the season tonight.  Against [dr-r-r-r-rumroll] Troy White Sox.  In Troy.  Using Troy's umpires.  High school or college kids, usually, who need $10 for 90 minutes' work and are only vaguely familiar with the rules of the game.  Sorta like Major League umpires, except that the majors use adults and pay obscene Union Scale.  The vague familiarity with the rules remains the same.

Maryville scored a run in the top of the first.  ...and let me just take a paragraph to describe the Maryville team.  Remember The Bad News Bears?  The movie?  The real movie?  With Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal?  Not the we can't write compelling screenplays so we're going to rehash hit movie plots from 30 years ago version.

Remember Ogilvie and Lupus?  Maryville has a few of each.  Remember Engelberg?  Got one.  Stein?  Got two.  The reason Maryville wins is because the Ogilvies and Lupuses get walked, having a strike zone the size of a postage stamp, and the few kids on the team who can legitimately hit drive them in.  ...on those rare occasions they don't score on the ubiquitous passed balls and wild pitches.

As I mentioned, the Troy team is legitimately good for being 11 year olds.  Most of their kids can throw reasonably well, and most can catch reasonably well, and some can hit reasonably well.  In terms of generalized hitting and fielding, they're collectively a notch above Maryville.  What Maryville has that's lacking in other teams is pitching.  My son and one other are both Amanda Whurlitzer.  Hard and accurate, and the 11 year olds facing them cannot regularly catch up to the pitch.  It's not uncommon for these two to turn in 3-up, 3-down innings, with 3 Ks.  As scorekeeper, I recorded an immaculate inning a few games back, 9 pitches and 3 strikeouts [not my son's inning – it was the other kid].  The runs come from dropped third strikes that reach followed by an occasionally hit ball that gets tossed all around the field.  My son had a 5-K inning early in the season.  Probably not a record for this level of baseball, but damned impressive.  That's my boy!  Overachiever.

But, back to the last game of the season, against a team that had lost on technical fouls, on the road, when they were now playing in their own home park with umpires paid [sic] by their home park's budget and who only vaguely understand the rules of the game.  After a half inning, Maryville was up 1-0.  That was the high point of the evening.  My son was not allowed to pitch this game – he'd pitched the previous game.  Another league rule.  The other good pitcher wasn't there.  Troy sent five batters to the plate in the bottom of the first, and all five scored, invoking the “5 runs allowed per inning except for the last inning” rule.  Outfielders overran fly balls, or waited until they fell before they felt confident in going after them, infielders tried to act like matadors neatly side-stepping ground balls as if they had a bull's horns.  Pitiful and embarrassing.

But, hey, the short kids with the postage stamp strike zones are coming up for Maryville.  We got this!  An easy 5-run inning.  It's worked all season.  Right?

Wrong.

This umpire called out the next three kids on helmet-high pitches.  Several were over helmet-high.  I was sitting directly behind the right-handed batters box, on a folding stool, scoring the game.  My eye level was pretty much at the same height as our Lupus' helmets.  And the pitches that were called strikes on them never once disappeared from my view behind the batter.  Which meant that the pitches were above their helmets.

Troy, showing some vulnerability, only scored three in the bottom of the second.

Maryville's third saw more Ogilvies being called out on above-the-helmet pitches.

Troy's third scored another five.

13-1 going into the fourth.  Alright kids, lookit, this umpire is calling strikes on you that are merely over the plate.  So you need to swing at crap, because they'll be called anyway.

That helped.  Because even though the Troy team can catch and throw “reasonably well”, at this level it doesn't necessarily mean a whole helluva lot.  Maryville actually got runners on by putting the ball in play.  Ill-advised base running took them off again, but still, they got on.  Temporarily.  The inning ended with no runs scored.

But because the score differential was greater than ten runs, the game was called.  And as the Troy team came off the field, I watched from my vantage point ten feet from home plate at least five of their players fist-bumping the umpire, and thanking him.  The high school kid paid by the home team's park.  The home team who'd been embarrassed with illegal bats – twice - while playing at Maryville.

Interesting, no?  The obvious questions: Was it a hamstringing in order to give an advantage? To compensate for a prior embarrassment?

You don't fist bump and thank an umpire when you win.  Instead, you fist bump your teammates.  Unless, of course, the umpire is one of your unofficial teammates.

I spoke to the kid umpire after the game, as he was being chummily chatted up by the Troy coach.  Hey.  Do you know what the strike zone is?  He averred as how he did.  And he described it more or less accurately.  Okay, then since we have kids who are 'this' tall [I held my hand out at his navel] why were you calling strikes that were 'that' high [and I moved my hand to his chin].

The kid didn't answer, he just looked embarrassed, as if he'd just been found out, which he had.  But the Troy coach who was standing there congratulating the umpire got livid.  Almost as livid as he got when his players were called – twice – for an illegal bat a week and a half before.  And the Troy coach started yelling at me about it.  Defending his umpire, who was not defending himself because he knew he'd been indefensible.

“Hey – both teams!!” he hollered.  No, actually it wasn't.  It was a Maryville-specific strike zone.  Not unlike the strike zone Angel Hernandez pulls out of his ass whenever he's behind the plate, come to think of it.  Or Hunter Wendelstedt.

No, on second thought, Hunter's strike zone wanders around the infield from inning to inning, never staying consistent apart from consistently wrong.  This was way too specifically bad.  Angel Hernandez all the way.  And it's not like high school kids are going to be even marginally precise with their game calling.  That's simply a given at this level.  When it's consistently wrong you roll your eyes and move on.  But this was blatant.  There was no “both teams” about it.  Besides, for Troy batters to get helmet-high pitches called a strike, the ball would have been above the Maryville catcher's ability to catch the ball from a crouch, and it would have hit the umpire full in the face mask.  The Troy team is tall – almost too tall for the 11 year olds they're required to be.

Besides, the Maryville pitcher could only throw ephus balls.  They died in the dirt just behind the plate.

“He can throw you out of here!!  And don't think he won't!!” the coach proxy-threatened me. The same coach who, with his sidekick a week and a half before had been screaming at the umpire in Maryville because they - the coaches - hadn't done their job checking bats.  Throw me out after the game is over?  That'd be a seriously useless gesture, and kind of a dead give-away, doncha think?  The kid umpire remained silent and ashamed.  He wasn't throwing anybody out.  He'd been caught and he knew it.  So did the Troy coach.

I informed the umpire that he was one-sidedly bad, and the coach of the winning team got defensive.  Bad optics, boys.  Very, very bad.